


Rings

by Inconjunct



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:11:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inconjunct/pseuds/Inconjunct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashley, Chris, and rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Silver Ring

It was one afternoon in the Washington’s sunny living room that she realized it. Hannah and Beth had just finished a re-read of the Twilight series to determine if Bella was a strong female character or not, and were debating: Hannah pro and Beth con. In Ashley’s opinion, Hannah had the weaker position but was bolstering it with a better mastery of the source material. Beth had clearly skimmed it, and now Hannah was using her superior knowledge to put her twin on the defensive.

  
As her friends debated the events of the tetralogy that had seemed so important a few years ago, Ashley was thinking about colleges and passing her silver ring from palm to palm, a nasty nervous habit she’d picked up as a freshman that she just couldn’t break.

  
She’d been to Stanford a few weeks before. Ashley’s parents had been encouraging her to go to an east-coast school and leave California behind for a few years, but when she thought about Stanford — it was funny, but she just knew it was the right choice. It had been no surprise when Chris was accepted there, and with Josh’s dad being an alumnus who had pretty much financed the entire media studies department, that application seemed pretty secure. The two of them went on to college just like they’d gone through most of life: together. She hadn’t seen either of them on campus, but they’d taken her out for dinner afterward. Chris drove and Josh paid. They’d bickered about what restaurant to go to and things just felt easy, natural. She’d let out a breath as the anxiety about the existence of this existential gulf between their lives as college students and hers still stuck in a life they’d left behind receded.

  
“Hey Ash, how about putting the ring down and telling us what you think?” Beth asked.

  
With a start, Ashley realized she had no idea what her friend was even asking for. A sly peek at her laptop confirmed that she’d been spacing out for the last seven minutes. She looked at Beth and evinced a thoughtful expression, hoping that Hannah would provide some context.

  
She wasn’t disappointed. “I remember from way back before! Ash was Team Edward, like me. We thought he was dreamy. Right, Ash?”

  
“Well—”

  
“No way,” Beth interrupted. “Ashley doesn’t go for guys like that. Do you, Ash?” Beth didn’t have to spell out that she was Team Jacob. The poster of Taylor Lautner in her middle school locker had made that pretty clear.

  
“To be honest, I didn’t really like Bella with either of them.”

  
“Then who did you want Bella to end up with?” Asked Hannah, clearly disappointed that Ashley wasn’t providing a tie-breaker vote.

  
“I don’t know. At first, I was hoping she’d end up with Mike, but he turned out to be kind of a jerk, so,” she shrugged. “I guess she got married to Edward and was happy, so I was happy for her, but if I were Bella, I don’t think I would have wanted to get attached to someone like that. Too intense, you know?”

  
“What about Jacob, then?” Needled Beth.

  
“Jacob was sweet, but he was just… a little rowdy for my taste. I liked how cheerful he was—” She could feel Beth’s glare boring into her “— and yes, Taylor Lautner was very handsome. Hot, even. I guess I just wanted Bella to end up with someone funny like Jacob, but sweet like Edward when he wasn’t being broody. And maybe someone human?”

  
“Someone like Chris?” Hannah teased.

  
Ashley blushed. Chris had driven her back to the airport after dinner. Mostly, he’d enthused about his classes and joked around with her about how NorCal was better than SoCal, the lights of the 101 shining off of his glasses. When they arrived at the airport, he’d snagged her backpack from the back seat so that she didn’t have to reach for it, and got out of the car to give her a hug. It had lasted only one or two seconds, but she’d thought about it the entire flight back to Los Angeles.

  
She looked away from Hannah and Beth. They’d grown up with Chris; he had been Josh’s fair-haired counterpart since they had all been playing hide and seek in the Washington mansion together. “Maybe,” she murmured, to dual shrieks of delight.


	2. Green Cubic Zirconia Ring

Ashley knocked on the door of Chris’ dorm room, expecting to hear a customary “just a sec” response. Instead, nothing. She tried the knob, and was surprised to find it unlocked. She stepped across the threshold and quietly closed it behind her. It felt faintly wrong to be in here alone, even though she stopped by almost every day.

 

She scanned the bedroom. Chris’ side of the room was a bit cluttered but surprisingly tidy for a boy. All his dirty laundry went right into the hamper, and his button down shirts were hung neatly in the closet. It had recently been vacuumed, but there was a bit of dust in the corners that suggested that his skill did not yet match his enthusiasm. The sheets on his bed were hunter green and quite soft; something she found herself contemplating more and more.

  
Josh’s side was, of course, empty. He’d taken a leave of absence for the third quarter running. He’d been doing really well at home the last few months, but then rapidly went downhill when he was back on campus. He was up at the Washington lodge right now, doing some kind of immersion therapy recommended by his analyst. His e-mails to Chris were sporadic, but he sounded like he was getting a lot out of it.

  
Her eyes strayed to Chris’ desk. His laptop was open and his glasses were nestled in their case, so he hadn’t gone far. She settled in on his desk chair to wait, idly flipping through her introduction to CS textbook. She lacked his enthusiasm for all things Python, but studying with him made up for the sometimes dry material.

     
She heard the door opening behind her, and swiveled the chair in response.

  
“Ash! Uh. You’re early?” Chris offered sheepishly. He was clearly fresh from the shower. His normally gelled up hair was hanging down over his forehead. She was mostly relieved that a towel was covering him from waist to knee.

  
“I’m not. I was on time.” She kept her eyes locked on his so that she’d avoid getting blushy and weird. “I’ll just turn around, okay?” She walked over to Josh’s side of the room and began a slow count. She tried not to think about the rustling noises behind her. At thirty, he gave the all clear.

  
“Sorry about that, Ash. I had just gone for a run, and I didn’t want to stink during our study bud sesh.”

  
“Are you sure you didn’t waste some time after that run poking around on Reddit or something?”

  
He retrieved his glasses from the desk. “No! Well, a few minutes perhaps. Two, maybe ten. Fifteen tops. Anyway, you ready to show me your assignment? You’re on for loops, right?”

  
She handed him her laptop and they set to work. The scholastic content of their meeting was brief this week; his tutelage put her worlds ahead of most of the people in her class, and she was no slouch at schoolwork in any case. At its conclusion, she was packing up her belongings when he grabbed her hand.

  
“Hold on a sec, will you?” He rummaged through his bottom desk drawer, and made a satisfied “aha” when he found a small box. “Happy birthday!”

  
“Chris— you didn’t have to.” He’d already written on her wall, DM’d her, and organized a social media campaign to get their friends to do the same.

  
“I know our big celebration with everyone from back home is in a few weeks, but this is the day you came into this world and well, that deserves to be celebrated too, you know?” He pushed the box into her hands, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Here.”

  
She untied the ribbon and unfolded the paper methodically, finding where the tape had been applied so that she didn’t have to tear it. He rolled his eyes at her deliberate approach, but he was smiling. She peeled a faintly perfumed layer of tissue paper away and slid the lid off to find a small silver ring with a large green emerald cut stone nestled inside. “Chris…” she trailed off, at a loss for words.

  
“I know it’s supposed to be rubies for July, but I can’t afford those yet,” he lowered his head in mock shame.

  
“Stop. It’s beautiful.” She slipped it on her right hand. “It fits! How did you…”

  
“Josh found a ring of yours in Hannah’s room after,” he swallowed. “In the spring, when they were cleaning it out. The silver one that your mom gave you, I think. I just jotted down the size in Evernote because I figured it might come in handy. I hope you like it. You like it, right?”

  
“I love it,” she smiled up at him.

  
“Cool,” he grinned back, and took a step forward. She was ready, her balance on the balls of her feet to stand up on tiptoe to kiss him, but he just offered his arm. “Can I interest m’lady in a birthday feast at the dining hall?” He offered his arm.  
As consolation prizes went, this wasn’t so bad. She slid hers through his. “You can.” 


	3. Ruby Ring

She and Chris rarely left one another’s side when they weren’t in class. After the traumatic death of his best friend, the administration saw fit to give Chris a single room instead of a stranger for a roommate, and Ashley practically moved in — sometimes she took a night to herself to get away from her blanket hog of a boyfriend. For his part, he complained that she snored, which was a dirty lie if she’d ever heard one.

  
It had been two months since they officially became Chris & Ashley, instead of the less satisfying Chris and Ashley they’d been before. They’d been cuddling before getting into his bed and everything had felt perfect. She fell asleep as big spoon for a change — given their relative heights, it was a little awkward, but it was comforting to hold him like this from time to time, to breath in air warmed from his body heat.

  
She was startled awake by Chris’ thrashing. Another nightmare. They were both in therapy — Ashley was pretty sure everyone, even Emily, was seeing someone at this point — but it didn’t seem to be making much of a difference in how Chris slept. Or more precisely how he didn’t. She was tempted to let him rest, but when he whimpered in his sleep, her heart broke and she reached out to touch him gently on the shoulder.

  
“Chris. Chris, wake up. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  
He took a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he repeated.

  
She kissed his cheek. “You’re okay.”

  
“Yeah,” he replied, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  
“…is there anything I can do to help?”

  
“Oh, you mean with,” he waved a hand vaguely, as if indicating the nightmares and the general problems that came along with post-traumatic stress disorder. “You being here helps.”

  
“It does?” He seemed to have nightmares almost every other night she was there. It was the real reason she slept separately sometimes — before midterms and finals, mostly. “How so?”

  
“When you’re not here, it’s just… worse. Much worse. It’s comforting to not be alone, you know?”

  
“That makes sense. Do you want to, you know, talk about it?”

  
He didn’t say anything for a long time. If his back weren’t so stiff, she’d have thought he’d fallen back asleep.

  
When he started, it sounded strangled, like he could barely form the words: “It’s always — it’s always Josh.”

  
She nodded, rubbing a small circle on his back. She’d figured.

  
This seemed to break the dam, and his words tumbled out in staccato bursts. “I asked Mike, you know? About what happened to him after we’d been away from the mountain for a bit. Once things got better.” He took a deep breath. “He said that he was trying to take Josh back through the mines when one of those things caught up with them. He said he — it took Josh. The old man, he told me that if it catches you alive, it — Ash, it strings you up and strips off your skin and eats your organs one by one.”

  
She hadn’t seen too much of the wendigos, really, and mostly it had been her former friend killing a bunch of old miners, if Sam and Mike were to be believed. But if that were true — “oh Gosh.”

  
“We left him to die,” he said in such a low whisper she wasn’t sure he’d spoken at all. “We left him to die,” he repeated dully. “In my dream, it’s always the same. It’s eating him alive, and he’s screaming for me to come, to help him, but my leg is all fucked up like it was that night and by the time I get there,” he shakes his head.

  
At a loss for words, she pulled him closer into an embrace. She wasn’t a stranger to Chris crying; he teared up during the sad parts in movies, and his family’s dog had died the spring after Hannah and Beth had disappeared. That had been waterworks on and off for a few weeks. This was different, though. He clung to her like the world was ending, body racked and chest heaving.

  
“I’m so sorry, Chris,” she said, knowing it was lame, not knowing what else to say. He’d done such a good job of keeping her safe that night, but he’d harmed himself in the process.

  
After an indeterminate amount of time, long enough that the barest bit of light was creeping into the room, his sobs eased. “It’ll be okay,” he said, mostly to himself. He looked into Ashley’s eyes for the first time since he’d woken up. “Josh didn’t make it out alive, but maybe there’s no way he could have, you know? We just didn’t know what we were up against until it was too late for him.”

  
“Honestly, if you think about it rationally,” something that her therapist had been encouraging her to do, “it’s amazing the rest of us made it. It’s — it’s lucky, even. It could have been so much worse. It could have easily been just four of us, or three of us. Or just me, or you.”

  
He grimaced. “Losing one of eight is still one too many, Ash.”

  
She took his hand in hers. “I know, I agree! I’m just glad it wasn’t worse, is all. I have nightmares too, you know.”

  
His brow furrowed. “You never told me.”

  
“Well,” she blew a strand of hair out of her face. “They’re not so bad, really. They’re scary when they’re happening, but I wake up and it’s okay. It’s usually about you, actually.” 

“About me?”

  
“Yeah. When you left the cabin with the old man, remember? In my dreams, you just don’t come back. And sometimes a wendigo gets me, and sometimes it doesn’t, but either way, I’m alone.” She let out a fragile breath. “When I wake up, though, I feel better.”

  
“Why?”

  
“Because I’m not alone. You’re still here.”

  
He smiled, and kissed her. “You bet I am. Say,” he got out of bed, eliciting an inarticulate groan from her. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  
He padded over to his dresser and went into the sock drawer, rummaging through it in the half light and cursing softly under his breath. Ashley rolled her eyes in response, and turned on his desk lamp.

  
“You’re brilliant, you know that? That’s why I love you.”

  
She grinned at him, at his easy confidence with those words. Chris’ knack for speaking his mind, even when feelings were involved, was one of her favorite things about him. “I love you, too.”

  
He turned toward her, something sparkling in his hand. “So, I was going to save this for the right time, but you know? I don’t know that there are right times.”

  
She nodded. “Yeah, when we were, you know, when I thought we were dying on the mountain, I kind of realized that, too. I’d been waiting for the right moment to tell you how I felt and I almost ended up losing you before I ever did.”

  
“Exactly! I was waiting, too. I wanted everything to be perfect because, you know, you’re perfect but that almost got us into a lot of trouble. So.”

  
No way.

  
He bent on one knee. “Ashley, I think I’ve wanted this for — I don’t know, for years. I mean, maybe it’s kind of too soon, or a little crazy, and we can wait however long you wanna wait, but… will you marry me?”

  
“I,” she looked at the ring. A pale pink ruby sparkled in the center of a platinum setting. Briefly, she wondered how he’d afforded this, and how he’d picked one of the only shades of pink that didn’t clash with her hair or complexion. Then she realized he was waiting for an answer. “Yes! Of course.”

  
He slid the ring on to the appropriate finger. She knew better than to ask how he’d guessed the size of her fourth finger using only the size of her third. There was probably an app for that.

  
He sagged onto the floor. “Oh, total relief. I was worried you were going to think this was insane.”

  
After a brief period of admiring it in the light of the lamp, she joined him. “I mean, maybe it is. But given everything that’s happened in the last year and a half, can you really say it’s the craziest thing we’ve been through?”

  
He pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Good point. You’re smart. Have I mentioned that?”

  
She laughed. “A few times.”

  
“Well, good. So,” he wiggled his eyebrows at her, “post-engagement celebration sex?”

  
“You’re ridiculous,” she replied, but she wasted no time in joining him in their bed.      
    
   


End file.
